


But if you close your eyes

by ghostking (Herebeinsanity)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: All the things that come with the de rolo backstory, Angst with a Happy Ending, Character Study, Gen, Spoilers for the briarwood arc and slight mention of the conclave arc, Theyre so young and i want to fight taliesin jaffe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 17:07:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 411
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7396210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Herebeinsanity/pseuds/ghostking
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do the walls of Whitestone look like to the surviving?<br/>Do they bring to mind memories of happier times, of children running about and playing, or parents fondly smiling? Or are they forever stained with the blood of their family, taken too quickly, too young, too soon?<br/>To Cassandra, what do they look like?</p>
            </blockquote>





	But if you close your eyes

**Author's Note:**

> For their ages, Taliesin said Percy was in his early twenties. I put him at around 21. That means Cass is about 16. They were kids, Taliesin, they were kids!  
> (Title from Pompeii by Bastille)

Percy, he must have it easier. As much as she doesn't wish to devalue his trauma, he was sixteen when it happened, and he escaped relatively quickly. Cassandra didn't. She doesn't have it so easy.

She wasn't quite a teenager when it happened, only eleven, she was too young to remember too much of that happy time before. And then she was trapped within those walls.  Trapped within her own home. Forced to stay within those walls with the people that murdered her entire family. 

Sometimes at night, if she listens to the echoes in the halls, she can still hear their voices.

How could she stand it? To live within those walls, stained in her memory forever with the blood of her siblings and father and mother, even after the years have passed. It should surely be a hardship, to live in those bloodstained halls. But...

But perhaps it is her victory. Her hard-earned right. She will live in these walls, and she will reclaim this castle, make new memories to wash away the bloodstains.

She will gladly host all the strays her brother pulls in, because the Briarwoods would have hated that. All these people that revel in their freedom? The Briarwoods thought freedom was only for those in command, and she will prove them wrong.

She will fill the library they burned, with books her father and Julius and Vesper would have loved, with books she knows Percy will love, and she will feel triumphant.

She will fight that little voice that asks if she really is a Briarwood after all, and she will be fiercely happy that it grows quieter each day.  
She will bask in the warm sunlight, and think of how Sylas would have burned beneath it, and she will smile.

Her people are free. Her city feels the sun. The crops grow, the refugees have homes, her city is safe, and she will keep it that way. 

She will take back her castle. She will fill it with joy. She will stomp on the graves of her captors and delight in the freedom of her people. She will dance in the sunlight, and eat the fruits of her harvests, and she will stand in defiance of everything the Briarwoods tried to make of her, and she will rejoice.

She will protect this city. She will protect these walls. And she will live, as a final "fuck you" to the Briarwoods, she will live.


End file.
